


Of Valiant Heart

by shadownashira



Series: Righteous Soul [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Consensual Possession, Crossover, Free Will, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 07:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadownashira/pseuds/shadownashira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Gabriel had been viscerally aware of the birth of his true vessel nearly four decades ago, a bright burst of light manifesting in his consciousness. He had successfully distanced himself from his brethren for millennia, but the presence of a true vessel always signalled events of significance to come.</i>
</p><p>Gabriel needed a new vessel, and his best option turned out to be one John Watson, dying in Afghanistan and praying desperately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Valiant Heart

The world was a spinning mirage of azure sky, brown sand and crimson blood. Voices were shouting from a faraway distance, but as numbness spread across his body from his left shoulder, those faded away into a ringing silence. As his body failed him, all John could think was – 

_'Please, God, let me live.'_

A rushing sound of wings surrounded him, the whispering of great feathers moving over one another, chased by the echoing resonances of a horn. A blanket of warmth settled heavily over him, pleasant heat diffusing throughout his body. Eventually, the weight lifted, but the odd tingling warmth remained. Gasping, John turned over and pushed himself up – 

Except he didn't have a body. Confused, he spent several moments flailing, trying to operate a human body that wasn't there. Everything was light and darkness and he simply…existed. 

"So, I'm not my Dad, but I figure I could still help with the part where you stay alive."

He didn't have a mouth, but somehow the question manifested itself. "What?"

"John Hamish Watson, right? Damn it, you're _short_. I was hoping for someone taller this time."

*********

Gabriel had been viscerally aware of the birth of his true vessel nearly four decades ago, a bright burst of light manifesting in his consciousness. He had successfully distanced himself from his brethren for millennia, but the presence of a true vessel always signalled events of significance to come. Earth-shatteringly significant, and he meant that literally. A quick calculation revealed that the Apocalypse was looming on the horizon, with the implications clear. While not one of the two main players in the final showdown – that dubious honour went to Michael and Lucifer – Gabriel was meant to assume some kind of leadership role in the battle against Hell's forces.

Yeah. Thanks, but no thanks. Just to be contrary, he had stayed far away from his true vessel, and for a long time had resisted the instinctual pull, first towards London, then Afghanistan.

Baiting the Winchesters had been the first mistake. As if it hadn't been bad enough that he had fallen for the morons' trick and exposed his true identity by getting trapped in the circle of holy fire, afterwards he had gone and started a quarrel with Veles. It should have been a harmless feud because he'd probably pissed off half the gods at one point or another, but then the rival trickster had pulled the Sword of Peleus and ran it through his right thigh. The last he remembered, that Sword was safely locked away in Heaven's armouries, so how in Dad's name was it on Earth? 

It couldn't kill an archangel, but it was enough to injure Gabriel's true form and cause his vessel to start disintegrating. By the time he managed to escape to a safe house, the vessel was a lost cause and his grace was starting to leak out. Gabriel had no choice but to abandon ship. 

The timing of the incident had _prophecy_ stamped all over it, and that had his metaphorical teeth gnashing as he drifted about the ether, trying to be inconspicuous. But he was running out of time; with so many angels hanging about Earth lately trying to start the Apocalypse, an archangel without the camouflage of a human would be noticed sooner rather than later. 

Afghanistan, then. 

Except, a cursory scan revealed that John Watson had his own calling in the military and would most likely refuse Gabriel, true vessel or not. Alternatives included a sister – unlikely to accept him either, what with the atheism and being in the honeymoon phase of a marriage – and three distant cousins. About to approach one of the cousins as a temporary stopgap measure, John Watson's desperate prayer had nearly bowled him over, like being slapped over the head with the heavy hand of fate.

Uniting with his true vessel had been his second mistake.

*********

He could just heal the bullet wound and let it fade away without a trace, restore John's body to a hundred percent, but far too many people in John's squad had seen him get shot, and the medevac team had worked frantically to save John's life as his blood soaked into fabric and hot desert sand.

So he – they? It was a unique situation Gabriel had found himself in – let his shoulder get stitched up and distanced himself from the stabbing agony radiating from the wound when the morphine wore off. Unlike so many of his siblings who dissociated themselves totally from their vessels' physical senses, there were pleasurable sensations he liked to experience, while the undesirable ones he just ignored. A fever tried to creep up on his vessel, but Gabriel subtly erased it, unwilling to put up with even more medical attention. 

He wanted to just snap himself out, go indulge in some comfort food because it had been a hell of a shitty week, but he had _promised_ John, so when the nurse finally left him alone, he sat up in the hospital bed and carefully stretched his arms out, testing this new body. The left hand trembled ever so slightly. Huh. That wasn't good. John was a doctor. Things got worse when Gabriel slid out of bed and tried to walk, and his right leg almost collapsed. That…wasn't right. John hadn't injured his leg. 

"Frigging reindeer on a pogo stick," he muttered to himself when the realisation dawned. The leg wasn't John, it was _Gabriel_. The damn Sword. 

In the middle of his grace, a warm presence finally stirred from where it'd been curled up, slumbering, the past two days. It unfurled sluggishly, expanding, and for a fleeting moment Gabriel considered just making it go back to sleep, but eventually he made room for the odd sensation of a bright human soul nestled so intimately within him. His previous vessel had decided to move on after a few decades of possession, Gabriel handing his soul over carefully to a Reaper, so he had almost forgotten how unsettling yet right it felt to have another consciousness sharing the same body. They were a comfortable natural fit together, as an archangel and its true vessel ought to be. 

_'Hey there, sleeping beauty. Been waiting for you to wake up so we can decide what to do here.'_

He waited out the obligatory bewilderment from John when the doctor finally returned to full awareness. Panic flared when John tried to move and couldn't; Gabriel mentally sighed and nudged the soul to take control. 

Almost immediately, a torrent of information swamped him, an incomprehensible burst of motion and sound. He grimaced and swept everything aside for now. Human minds weren't meant to take on an archangel's knowledge. He would have to build a filter later on to keep himself from overwhelming the poor guy. 

To his credit, John adapted to the situation quickly enough, curious pinpricks of light brushing up against him. Soon after, he limped forwards to pick up his chart for a thorough read-through. Several questions – the amount of time since he was shot, the well-being of his fellow soldiers, the mystery of the limp – flashed through his mind and were just as quickly answered by Gabriel's memories.

"I'm going to be invalided back home," John said quietly out loud, resignation welling up between them. 

_'Say the word and I can snap us back good as new. Might want to give it a few months to make it look convincing to everyone else, though.'_ He was not enthusiastic at all about returning to his vessel's career of army doctor, but that was the thing about being an angel and sharing space with someone else. The vessel had just as much autonomy as the angel. It was possible to get around it if one's vessel was religious and crazy enough to give their body over wholly to the angel, but John Watson wasn't such a vessel. Not quite ready to move on from the living. Smart enough to negotiate terms with the angel asking to possess him, and Gabriel desperate enough to agree.

After several minutes' silence as he prodded absently at the sore spot in his true form where the Sword had penetrated, John's thoughts turned towards the Apocalypse, and the steady, calm resolve that accompanied them was the first sign Gabriel had that things were about to change drastically.

From the perspective of an angel, John Watson blazed strong and iridescent. He had the kind of soul that demons craved to corrupt. The soul of a righteous man. In another time and place, he would have carried the mantle that Dean Winchester did now. Having this particular human as Gabriel's true vessel was enough to make the archangel wonder if Dad had been drunk when foretelling the Apocalypse, because the 'good soldier' shtick wasn't his style at all. There were parallels with John's danger kink and Gabriel's trickster inclinations, but that was as far as similarities went, really.

He should have known better than to come into close contact with such a soul, because men like John Watson were always stupidly heroic, and what John was thinking right now was more stupid than heroic.

_'No, no, no, fuck no!'_

_'… not going to sit around when Satan is about to bring on the end of the world.'_

_'It doesn't matter to us, Johnny, I have tricks up my sleeves to get us through this alive.'_

_'…sister, friends…'_

_'You think I want to watch my brothers kill each other?'_

_'We could make a difference – '_

_'Hate to tell you this, but free will's an illusion, sunshine.'_

_'…Winchesters? And Castiel?'_

_'Those yahoos are just prolonging the inevitable. What can they do against the whole of Heaven and Hell? Against destiny?'_

_'You're an archangel in its true vessel – "_

_'In case you didn't get me the first time, no!'_

_'Coward.'_

At that, Gabriel flinched. Dean's accusation that he was too afraid to stand up to his brothers had struck home, and John knew it, was playing dirty by aiming straight for the chink in his armour.

 _'Lucifer can be killed with an archangel blade, or locked back into his Cage. He's your brother, but between him and humanity, I know you'll pick us.'_ John concentrated on shaping his thoughts articulately, using each word as a weapon. _'Destiny, fate; those are a load of bollocks. You could potentially change the outcome of the Apocalypse, and by choosing not to do so, you're just making a self-fulfilling prophecy come true. You've spent enough time running away, don't you think?'_

This was such a bad idea.

************

When he landed in Carthage, Missouri, it was like stumbling right into the midst of an epic party gone horribly wrong. The recent deaths of hundreds of people clung in the air, and the sulphuric stench of demons pervaded the entire town. Reapers were everywhere, waiting patiently for the arrival of their big boss. Beneath it all, Lucifer's tainted presence resonated against Gabriel.

He briefly debated interrupting the ritual, but no, to get the Horsemen's rings, they actually had to be released onto this plane first. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.

Ignoring John, who was poking into Gabriel's memories with interest, he stretched his senses. The Winchesters were at least shrewd enough to have cloaked themselves from angelic detection, because neither of them pinged on his radar. The only proof that they were here at all was the Impala parked on the street, and the few hellhound corpses strewn across the gravel. Castiel, however, wasn't hidden, though the dimness of his grace made Gabriel frown.

Was it worth it, he wanted to ask, to fall for a couple of humans? 

The baying calls of hellhounds on the hunt drew his attention towards two human souls, one of them fading rapidly away. He would have ignored them and gone straight to Castiel if it hadn't been for John, who gave him the vessel equivalent of an elbow jab in the ribs.

Rolling his eyes, he flew directly to the room the humans were in, considering the two women slumped on the floor and the explosives rigged around them. 

"Hello, ladies," he said cheerfully. "Need a ride out of here?"

**Author's Note:**

> I have sequels in mind for this, though I'll state here and now that the rest of SPN S5 remains mostly unchanged, and as a result the first two seasons of Sherlock follows canon. This mostly acts as the prequel for a post-Reichenbach fic, where we see how a supernaturally-aware John reacts to Sherlock's fall. There will also be short stories featuring Gabriel!John and the rest of Team Free Will. I don't know when I'll write these, so fingers crossed!


End file.
